What are the Phases of DevSecOps?
Table of contents
What is DevSecOps?
DevSecOps is a method for handling IT security with the mindset that “everyone is accountable for security.” It combines injecting security into a company’s DevOps pipeline. The aim is to involve security in all software development life cycle (SDLC) stages. DevSecOps indicates you shouldn’t save security for the last stage of the SDLC, which is contrary to its predecessor development methods.
If your business already uses DevOps, you should consider upgrading it to DevSecOps. DevSecOps is primarily built on the DevOps services, which will guide your case for switching. And by doing this, you’ll be able to assemble talented specialists from several technical disciplines to improve your security procedures as they are now.
DevSecOps is a way of thinking or a culture that IT operations and developers’ teams follow when creating and deploying software applications. Agile application development incorporates security audits and penetration testing that are both active and automated.
To implement DevSecOps, you need to:
- Reduce vulnerabilities in software programming, incorporate the concept of security from the beginning of the SDLC.
- Make sure everyone shares responsibility for adhering to security procedures in their tasks, including IT operations teams and developers.
- Ensure DevOps workflow begins with the involvement of security controls, processes, and tools. This will allow for automatic security checks throughout the software delivery process.
DevOps managed services has always been about integrating security into the development and release process, quality assurance (QA), database management, and everyone else. DevSecOps, on the other hand, is an extension of that process where security is always the crucial component of the procedure.
How to Adopt DevSecOps with Your Team?
In software development, DevOps best practices has sparked a revolution. It combines software development, deployment, and management into one process. Operations and development teams would merge into a single team; if not, the teams collaborate closely. Faster updates and improved cycle control for software releases are the advantages.
Likewise, there has been a growing understanding that security must be an essential component of the development process. It takes longer and doesn’t work well to write code before figuring out how to make it secure. The phrase “DevSecOps” was created due to the convergence of these trends.
The core concept of DevSecOps is that everyone is responsible for security. Management must take into consideration when defining requirements and developing schedules. Developers must incorporate it into every facet of code and specifications. Security must be tested by QA professionals in addition to functionality. Finally, operations teams must monitor software behavior and respond quickly to problems.
Each party must adopt a new way of thinking to implement DevSecOps. They must establish a strong line of communication because they each have specific tasks. No issues ought to be overlooked due to a lack of a communication. Security teams have frequently been separated from other groups during the development cycle. With DevSecOps, they are included in each of the phases of devsecops process and available to offer inputs.
To adapt, software development, maintenance, and upgrading must incorporate security awareness into each stage.
Plan
The planning phases of DevSecOps is the least automated with the involvement of collaboration, discussion, review, and a strategy for security analysis. Teams must conduct a security analysis and develop a schedule for security testing that specifies where, when, and how it will carry it out.
IriusRisk, a collaborative threat modelling tool, is a well-liked DevSecOps planning tool. There are also tools for collaboration and conversation, like Slack, as well as solutions for managing and tracking issues, like Jira Software.
Code
Developers can produce better secure code using DevSecOps technologies during the code phase. Code reviews, static code analysis, and pre-commit hooks are important code-phase security procedures.
Every commit and merges automatically starts a security test or review when security technologies are directly integrated into developers’ existing Git workflow. These technologies support different integrated development environments and many programming languages. Some popular security tools include PMD, Gerrit, SpotBugs, CheckStyle, Phabricator, and Find Security Bugs.
Build
Once developers develop code to the source repository, the ‘build’ step begins. The primary objective of DevSecOps build tools is automated security analysis of the build output artifact. Static application software testing (SAST), unit testing, and software component analysis are crucial security procedures. Tools can implement into an existing CI/CD pipeline to automate these tests.
Dependencies on third-party code, which may come from an unidentified or unreliable source, are frequently installed and built upon by developers. In addition, dependencies on external code may unintentionally or maliciously involve vulnerabilities and exploits. Therefore, reviewing and checking these dependencies for potential security flaws during the development phase is crucial in the phases of devsecops.
The most popular tools to create build phase analysis include Checkmarx, SourceClear, Retire.js, SonarQube, OWASP Dependency-Check, and Snyk.
Test
The test phase is initiated once a build artifact has been successfully built and delivered to staging or testing environments. Execution of a complete test suite requires a significant amount of time. Therefore, this stage should fail quickly so that the more expensive test tasks are saved for the final stage.
Dynamic application security testing (DAST) tools are used throughout the testing process to detect application flows such as authorization, user authentication, endpoints connected to APIs and SQL injection.
Multiple open source and paid testing tools are available in the current market. Support functionality and language ecosystems include BDD Automated Security Tests, Boofuzz, JBro Fuzz, OWASP ZAP, SecApp suite, GAUNTLET, IBM AppScan, and Arachi.
Release
The application code should have gone extensive testing by the time the DevSecOps cycle reaches the release stage. The stage focuses on protecting the runtime environment architecture by reviewing environment configuration values, including user access control, network firewall access, and personal data management.
One of the main concerns of the release stage is the principle of least privilege (PoLP). PoLP signifies that each program, process, and user need the minimum access to carry out its task. This combines checking access tokens and API keys to limit access for the owners. Without this audit, a hacker can come across a key that grants access to parts of the system that are not intended.
In the release phase, configuration management solutions are a crucial security component. Reviewing and auditing the system configuration is then possible in this stage. As a result, commits to a configuration management repository may use to change the configuration, which becomes immutable. Some more well-liked configuration management tools include HashiCorp Terraform, Docker, Ansible, Chef, and Puppet.
Deploy
It’s the proper time to deploy the build artifact to production phase if the earlier process go well. The security problems that only affect the live production system should be addressed during deployment. For instance, it is essential to carefully examine any configuration variations between the current production environment and the initial staging and development settings. In addition, production TLS and DRM certificates should be checked over and validated in preparation for upcoming renewal.
The deploy stage is a good time for runtime verification tools such as Osquery, Falco, and Tripwire. It can gather data from an active system to assess if it functions as intended. Organizations can also apply chaos engineering principles by testing a system to increase their confidence in the system’s resilience to turbulence. Replicating real-world occurrences such as hard disc crashes, network connection loss, and server crashes is possible.
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Operation
Another critical phase is operation, and operations personnel frequently do periodic maintenance. Zero-day vulnerabilities are terrible. Operation teams should monitor them frequently. DevSecOps can use IaC tools to protect the organization’s infrastructure swiftly and effectively while preventing the human error from slipping in.
Monitor
A breach can be avoided if security is constantly being monitored for abnormalities. As a result, it’s crucial to put in place a robust continuous monitoring tool that operates in real-time to maintain track of system performance and spot any exploits at an early stage.
Useful link: DevSecOps Solution to Cloud Security Challenge
DevSecOps Best Practices
The three main principles of DevOps automation tools are speed, agility, and collaboration. However, DevOps lifecycle teams frequently have unique challenges when it comes to security. As a result, DevOps model and DevSecOps model need to be aware of many potential security concerns, from protecting production environments to securing the application development process. There are multiple benefits of DevOps.
We’ve compiled a list of 5 DevOps best practices and DevOps security tools issues to help you remain on top of the curve.
1) Protect Your Production Environment
User application will eventually deploy to and utilized by clients in your production environment. As a result, it’s critical to make this environment as secure as possible. Developing different layers in your production environment, each with a different level of access and security constraints, is one method to achieve this.
2) Implement Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
To limit access to DevOps technologies resources depending on the responsibilities of users, one sort of access control is called role-based access control (RBAC). For instance, you may create roles such as “developer” and “testing” that each has access to different areas of your staging environment and code repositories. Implementing RBAC, you can reduce the potential damage caused by the insider threats.
3) Ensure the Security of the Application Development Process
A safe application development approach is the starting step in securing your DevOps services company pipeline. This entails limiting access to your code repositories to authorized developers. It also guides you to work with developers you can depend on to complete the task and follow cybersecurity best practices at all times.
4) Secure Sensitive Information
Any information that could use to detect or damage an individual should encrypt in storage and transmission. This involves health information, credit card numbers, and social security numbers.
Using pretty good privacy (PGP) encryption is one process for encrypting the data. To secure your data, PGP involves public key cryptography and symmetric.
5) Implement Two Factor Authentication (2FA)
Access to DevOps consulting services resources can secure by using two-factor authentication (2FA), an additional layer of security. With 2FA, a user must present two unique identification forms to prove their identity access.
The first element is something they are aware of, like a password, and the second password is mostly generated on a device they have, like a mobile. Even if a user’s password hacked, using 2FA can guide to prevent unauthorized access to resources and systems.
Useful link: Need to Know About DevSecOps and its Implementation
Implementing DevSecOps Challenges
There are multiple challenges in implementing DevSecOps automation. Let’s go through the three key challenges in adopting DevSecOps.
1) Addressing and Fixing Vulnerabilities
Security Boulevard survey report revealed that in companies without DevSecOps, 50% of apps are always susceptible to attack. Additionally, since security testing often occurs at the end of the development cycle, developers frequently patch or rewrite code very late, which adds time and expense.
2) Complexity in the Cloud
The Flexera State of the Cloud report revealed that 92% of enterprises use several public clouds. These multi-cloud installations frequently employ a variety of cloud services and extensively rely on automation, which makes it challenging for security to stay up. Data security, compliance assurance, and ongoing infrastructure security pose significant issues.
3) Compatibility Issues
The DevOps strategy team uses multiple open-source tools, including a repository of frameworks, scripts, libraries, and templates. While these tools increase productivity, if they are not properly used or audited, they may also cause security problems.
Useful link: Pros and Cons of DevSecOps
DevSecOps Security Monitoring
Additional security precautions are necessary once an application has been deployed and stabilized in a live-world production environment. Organizations need to monitor and keep an eye out for any attacks or leaks in the live application with security monitoring loops and automated security checks.
Inbound security threats are detected and blocked in real-time through runtime application self-protection (RASP). RASP monitors incoming attacks and allows the application to autonomously rearrange itself without user input in response to specified conditions. Some DevOps challenges are Test data, manual deployment, and manual testing.
Conclusion
As more development teams modernize their procedures and use new tools, security must be their primary priority. DevSecOps is a cyclical process that needs to be continuously improved and applied to every deployment of new code. The development of modern software teams is crucial since attacks and exploits are always changing.
DevSecOps is a new way of security, and technologies specifically designed for it ought to be widely implemented. DevSecOps principles will help our continuous pipeline reduce the chance of security flaws, boosting customer confidence in the organization.
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